Tuesday, September 25, 2012

I didn't hit up a ton of garage sales this summer but I did hit the jackpot on one.

In addition to vintage aprons, a sewing machine, carpet remnants that were new to "carpet" my storage room's concrete floor, vintage cookie cutters, milk glass to replace one I broke a few months ago and good conversation with the sellers, I also scored a box full of canning jars which included a vintage blue one and a box of brand new canning lids for the whopping price of one dollar!

Sunday, September 9, 2012

We had the morning and early afternoon to explore around Munich, see the Glockenspiel and other buildings, get rained on a bit and eat some of the best gelato all of us had ever had.

Mango sorbet for a small boy was a special treat indeed that he is still talking about.

Our train got into the Brussels Midi station after 9 p.m. Thankfully David napped like a champ on trains the entire trip.

Our hotel was directly across the street from the train station which was great but the station was soooo huge that it was hard to know where to exit to walk right across the street.

Some nice people and a little bit of precious data spent on the iphone later and we had it in sight. We were all really tired and not at our best. Thankfully the lobby had these cool cubes which took someone's mind off things while we got checked in!

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

I know this photo is blurry but I had to include it to show how we were in crazy college backpacker mode, except wait, we had a two year old with us! ha!

David made up this particular riding on the suitcase mode of transport earlier this summer all on his own and he loves it and gets upset when he can't do it. It gets TONS of attention in airports, etc.

After a day of walking around we were off to the train station to get ready for our next leg. I was sad to discover that the little bakery stand that had been there in my college days had been replaced by lots of new shiny food stands of all types. Oh well. We still managed to find some nice things for the train.

I was so happy we went through Cologne and I got to spot this cathedral out the train window. When I was in Europe in college, I woke up from my train car bed in the middle of the night one night and stepped out into the hall to see this beauty with snow falling down all around it! A sweet memory that is burned into my mind forever.

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

So Adrian's boss says something to the effect of "hey, there's this conference in Munich, you in?" and since it's covered by the company and all then yep, he's in. So then, you may or may not know that Adrian has family in England who would LOVE for us to visit but this mama has admittedly been putting off an overseas flight with a little guy but then now seems like the time . . .

so, we went and I'm glad we did but boy did it have it's ups and downs!

So day one I think I have one or two photos of but I don't know where they are but basically Adrian was already over there for the conference and not wanting to just find things for David and I to do by ourselves in a foreign country every day for the whole conference I opted to come on the last day.

Which meant flying by myself over the ocean with a two year old.

What was I thinking?

So basically, day one consisted of an extremely early morning flight, 7 hours of hanging out at O'hare and playing in their really super cool play area (thankfully!), a LONG lunch at Macaroni Grill in the airport - best money ever spent - as we got waited on and David got to color and I sort of got a little break, my button popping off my favorite jeans in the family bathroom and *thankfully* God knew in advance that would happen and had me pack a safety pin "to hold my keys" that I quickly realized needed to become a repair for my pants (what would I have done flying over the ocean with falling down jeans? I don't know!) and then getting on an 8 hour flight somewhere around 6 p.m. with a poor boy who hasn't gotten a nap all day.

The above photo is what I look like after all of that, not sleeping on the plane hardly and then getting to take a glorious shower and nap at the hotel and have some lunch and then going out with Adrian's co-workers for a delicious Greek dinner in Germany.

Why not, right?

And here is one happy boy finally getting to ride the trains in Germany (well, this is a subway really) that his Daddy has been sending pictures of all week.